How I feel about the phone these days as a Gen-X in the 20s

Phones are good for everything except talking on them.

I'll first that that yes, I'm calling this decade the '20s. We're over 20 years into it now, nobody confuses the 2020s with the 1920s, so it's okay.

Do I call the 2010s the tens? Yes. But for years 2000-2009, I do call those the two-thousands (or 2000s in written form for short) because referring to them as "oughts" is just weird.

Also, small complaint: It annoys me whenever anybody says "year two thousand" when referring to that year specifically. Just say 2000.

We're never getting back how awesome phone conversations were in the late '90s

I'm not referring to what people talked about in the '90s but rather the feel and the sound of the conversations.

Landline phone tech for the home had its peak in the late '90s and early 2000s. This was a time when the sound quality was as good as it ever got on the old style systems. Absolutely no lag from when you spoke to when the other person heard you and vice versa. The phone designs were amazing, and the handsets had great battery life. Speakerphones even on cheap home systems were great too.

For the cordless systems, gone were the retracting antennas, replaced with small stubby ones. And the wireless frequency that worked best was 2.4GHz. There was a short period where 5.6GHz was promoted as an "upgrade", but it was terrible compared to 2.4. The range you got on 2.4GHz was incredible. Talk anywhere in the house, outside in the yard, basement, wherever. It always worked.

In addition to that, it was not uncommon to keep a phone for 5 to 10 years before replacing it. There was simply nothing to break on them.

The modern smartphone: Very usable with data OFF

I use a prepaid smartphone service that allows me to receive normal calls and texts using no data. Whenever I need data for some internet thing when not at the house, I can enable it temporarily. When at the house, I just use Wi-Fi when needed.

The reason I mention this is because there are some carriers out there that require data to be on all the time just for phone service to work. I hope it's a good long while before I ever have to deal with a phone that requires always-on data, as I would find that genuinely annoying.

I like texting, taking photos and making videos

These are the 3 things I like best about the smartphone. I use the Textra app for my texts (it's amazing). It's easy to make high quality videos. Where photos are concerned, I really like that I can geotag them.

Before the smartphone, I had been searching for a point-and-shoot digital camera that had GPS specifically to geotag photos. I never bought one because they were way too expensive and still are. For whatever stupid reason, getting a point-and-shoot camera with geotagging is a big ask. On the phone however, it's built right in.

Granted, a camera like a Canon PowerShot or a Panasonic LUMIX takes far superior photos when compared to a phone... but the phone makes geotagging, storing and sharing of photos stupidly easy.

I don't like talking on the phone anymore

It's been years since I've had any sort of long conversation on the phone. Once you go smartphone, long voice conversations just isn't a doable thing for several reasons.

There's no way to comfortably hold a plastic brick (the phone) for a long period of time.

The sound quality is terrible.

I refuse to use an ear bud because it makes my ear sore quickly, and I don't like having a speaker physically in my ear. Yes, I've tried several different types of buds. All terrible.

All smartphones have "overtalking" problems where if you use the microphone and speaker on the handset itself, you're guaranteed to talk over the person you're conversing with and them talk over you. This is because the mic and speaker on smartphones, including expensive ones, are just cheap tinny little things. The phone tries to smooth it out with audio processing, but nope, it's bad. That's just the way it is.

Use the speakerphone? Forget it. Same overtalking problem, only louder.

Because of all this crap, I can only stand to talk on a smartphone for maybe 5 minutes.

Is there a way to use an old style cordless phone with a smartphone when home?

Yes.

Panasonic, as far as I'm concerned, does make the best cordless phones. Back in the day I spent over $100 on a set from them, and wow, was that phone glorious. Loved it.

They're still making great cordless phones now with the addition of linking it to a smartphone. When you search Panasonic Link2Cell, that's when you find their BlueTooth handsets.

These things have the stuff that makes talking on the phone not terrible. Some have an amplification option. Some also have a "SLOW" mode that literally slows the speed of speech you hear in real time.

Is this the same as talking on the phone at home in the late '90s? Not exactly, but it's the closest thing to it.

Do I prefer text over talk?

I'm not one of those guys who believes things were oh-so much better when people actually talked on the phone.

From years ago before the smartphone era, I can distinctly remember having certain friends at that time who did the extremely annoying thing of calling me while loud things were going on around them. Or worse yet, doing that, talking to me and other people in the room at the same time.

Yeah, I don't miss that. At all.

Another thing I don't miss are people that don't know how to end a phone conversation. You know the type. They seem to enjoy long awkward moments of silence. After enough of that crap, you say, "WELL OKAY THEN I guess I'll talk to ya later" and suddenly then they have a bunch to say, then stop... and the awkward silence happens again.

I don't miss that either.

It's safe to say yes, I do prefer text.

I wouldn't want to go back to cordless phones

If I really wanted better voice calling, I'd get that Panasonic set. But the fact I'm so used to not talking on the phone makes it not worth the bother.

I'm also not hot on the idea of using a separate camera from my phone, which would not have geotagging.

Right now, as things stand, I'm okay with my smartphone. It's not perfect (what phone is?), but it does get the job done.

Some people "live on their phone". I don't. But at the same time, I've come to realize that in this modern era, the smartphone is required. Not just for communications but also because there are some services where if you don't have a smartphone, it's not only inconvenient but outright prevents access to certain stuff.

It's fun to look back on what I used to use in the late '90s for phone tech, but it's definitely something that should stay there.

A better green Fender Telecaster

If you're going to go green with a Telecaster, this is the way to do it.

I made mention of a seriously fugly Fender Telecaster Player Plus elsewhere in a terrible color called Cosmic Jade. Horrible. Green guitars are terrible.

However, this one isn't.

Take the Fender Player Telecaster in Olive. When it comes to a green Telecaster, this one is done right.

The darker green works great. The mint green pick guard works great with the body color. The dark fingerboard works with the body color also.

Would I actually own this guitar? Yes. I could see myself playing something like this often because it's a CME exclusive color (meaning not part of the standard Fender catalog).

I actually like the understated look of this quite a bit, because sometimes it will look black depending on the light, and other times the green shows up. I also really dig the fact there is no metal flake in this finish, giving it a super "smooth" look.

Olive, when done right, really works. And this Telecaster does. Heck, even the chrome looks more shiny and special when against Olive.

Is this Tele priced higher than others? No! You don't have to pay any extra to get it, so if green is your thing, get this guitar.

Living with a high mileage car (over 144,000 miles!)

This may be a new thing for some, but it's the norm for me.

At the time I write this, my car just came back from the shop for rear brake adjustments and front passenger side wiring repair at a cost of $450 for the whole job. You may think that's expensive. It isn't and I'll explain why.

I am no stranger to driving a car or truck with over 100,000 miles on it. In fact, I consider any vehicle with under 100K on the odometer to be a "low miles" car.

I've learned a few things over the years when it comes to the care of a high-miles car.

Lube those tracks

This is for power windows. I unfortunately learned this lesson the hard way.

The window is held in place with tracks. These tracks over time dry out and need to be lubricated. The lubrication to use is WD-40 Specialist Water Resistant Silicone Lubricant. Roll the window down, spray the lubricant into the tracks, then roll the window up and down 10 times to work the lubricant in. Do this once a year.

Before I knew to do this, I spent several hundred dollars on repairs for a driver's side window. When it started rolling up/down slowly, I just figured "Oh, it's just doing this because it's old." No. It was slow from no lubrication. Had I lubricated the tracks, the only cost would have been the price of the lubricant and nothing more.

Stop slamming the damn door

The only thing slamming the door shut hard does is break stuff sooner, and not just for stuff on the door. Every time that door is slammed shut forcefully, a hard shock is sent through the whole car. Not smart.

It's especially stupid to forcefully slam shut a car door with the window open. Watch the window shake when you do that and you'll understand why.

Over the years, I've had to tell passengers a few times to stop slamming their door shut so hard. Yeah, they get annoyed when I say this. I don't care. It's my car and not theirs.

Air and rotate tires routinely

Air should be checked every 90 days. Rotations should be done every 6,000 miles or twice a year. That's how you get 50,000 miles or well beyond that out of a set of tires.

I'm honestly amazed at how many people I see driving around with semi-flat tires.

Don't "top off" the fuel tank

When the gas pump clicks after filling it, STOP on first click. There's a thing called an evaporative system within the fuel assembly. Namely, the canister. Topping off the tank will break that canister sooner. Not cheap to fix.

Replace the fuel cap if loose

If the cap is loose (it's obvious if it is), that can make the car's computer trip an error code and put a "check engine" light on the dashboard.

Clean the fuel cap area

This can get gummed up with black crap over time. Baby wipes clean this area easily.

Replace the radiator cap

This is more than just a cap. There's a valve inside it, and that valve eventually wears out. If the car has over 100K miles on it, replace the cap. Cheap.

Clean the MAF sensor

This is another thing that will prevent a "check engine" light from happening. Getting the MAF (mass air flow) sensor out for cleaning is usually easy on most cars. Spray it with MAF sensor cleaner, shake dry, reinstall, done.

Replace both air cleaner filter and cabin filter

This is a once-a-year thing. The air cleaner gets junk in it, and while true you can just shake out the dust and debris, better to just replace it outright. If the car has a cabin filter (mine is behind the glove box, sometimes a different location on other cars/trucks), do the same.

Sanitize the floor carpet

Resolve carpet cleaner from a spray bottle. Wear kitchen gloves when using this stuff, and don't let the spray get on to any plastics or leather. Spray, let sit for 5 minutes, use a hand towel to work it in to the carpet, let dry.

This also works on normal cloth seats.

Clean the dashboard

303 automotive protectant spray. Spray or wipes do the same job. Makes the plastics last longer and prevents discoloration/cracking.

Replace tire valve stem caps

Cheap to buy and should be replaced once yearly.

Always use simple black plastic caps, because they typically provide the best seal using the least amount of weight. I can't see how adding weight from metal caps to a valve stem would do it any good.

Replace license plate screws

If you see rust on these, replace. If the screws that are rusted also rusted the screw holes they were in, repair those holes as best you can first, then fit with new screws.

Install a new battery in the key fob for keyless entry

If it's been more than 5 years since the fob battery was replaced (if ever), replace it with a new one.

Have a spare key

If you only have one key for the car and no spare, that's not smart. Have at least two, and make sure both keys work.

Also make sure the spare is in a place where you'll actually remember where it is in case you ever need it.

Lubricate keyholes

If the car uses regular traditional keys with older style keyholes, spray some of that WD-40 silicone lubricant into the key hole (you can hold closed keyholes open with a pen), then move the key in and out a few times to lubricate. Lubricate all keyholes. Ignition, doors and trunk/hatch.

Clear out dust and debris from switch areas

Use dust removal spray to clear out dust and whatever from power window/lock switches. Vacuuming never gets rid of this dust. You need the spray for it.

What was the deal with a $450 charge just for rear brake adjustments and wiring repair?

When you have a car with over 100K miles on the odometer, you get what I call "100K mile problems", which basically means age related things that go wrong with a car.

In the area of the engine bay on the passenger side front where the headlight is on that side, the part of the main engine wiring harness that connects electricity there had two little frayed wires. The wires were frayed right at the connector, preventing the passenger side turn signal from working at all, hence the need for the repair.

On top of that, the break in the wires was on the engine wiring harness side of the connector and not the headlight side. If it were the headlight side, I could have fixed that myself with a new $20 headlamp replacement wiring harness from eBay. The way this wiring break happened was something way more complicated that I could not fix.

To fix this, the connector had to be re-pinned completely, wires trimmed, stripped, re-soldered, entire system probed and checked to make sure there wasn't a break elsewhere, then put all back together and re-shielded.

All of the cost was labor. The shop barely charged me anything for the brake adjustments (e-brake cable tightening and rear drum cleaning).

Did I pay too much?

No, I didn't pay too much.

$450 for two little wire connections sounds insane, but again, this was engine wiring harness stuff. Outright replacing that harness would have cost $800 just for the parts. With labor included, it would have easily busted well over $1,000. The price of $450 was a bargain, especially since the car is paid in full.

What caused the wire break? Unknown. Could have been a rodent that chewed through the wires, or something flew under the car while on the highway and yanked the cable hard, or maybe something else entirely.

Newer cars don't have problems like this, but older ones over 10 years old do. My guess is something yanked the cable, and since the wiring is over a decade old, yeah, that can cause a break.

If it's paid and it runs right...

If the car is paid off and running well, which mine is, then it's worth putting some cash into it for repairs. The alternative to that is financing a new car. And $450 is way, way cheaper than that.

My car just turned over 144,000 miles recently. I looked at the miles before writing this, but at this point I don't pay much attention to the miles anymore otherwise. Car maintenance is performed based on time (in months, specifically) because it's just easier to schedule things out that way. My odometer is digital and can be switched over to trip odometer, and that's what I use because it's easier to tell when to fuel up based on miles rather than fuel gauge.

What's it like to drive a car with this many miles on it?

Not all that different from a low-miles car - if you keep up on the maintenance.

It is the maintenance more than anything else that's key to keeping a car running longer.

I'm not saying this is true for all cars and trucks, because some of them are just stinkers like the 2011 Hyundai Sonata and 2014 Ford Focus.

But for cars and trucks that aren't known to be stinkers, running them up to 100K and well beyond that is a totally doable thing, again with proper maintenance.

Hamburger: The Motion Picture

An awful movie from the mid-1980s. I watched this.

I stumbled upon this movie while browsing around the internet, meaning I wasn't actively looking for it. It took me two days to get through this because I could only watch it in 15 to 20-minute bursts...

...because it's that bad.

According to a trivia page I read about this flick:

The movie was not sold to a distributor and was released independently by its production company, which has been long out of business. It's unclear who exactly owns the rights to the movie, and it's unknown once the movie will ever see its DVD or Blu-ray release.

This means you can watch the movie completely for free on the internet. More on that in a minute.

Okay, let's get into this.

Hamburger: The Motion Picture is one of those '80s movies that has a Porky's and Screwballs flavor to it. It doesn't take itself seriously at all.

The storyline? Well, there is one, so that's something. It's about a guy who is doing poorly in college because he can't stop having sex, so he decides to enroll in a corporate hamburger franchise camp to "graduate" there and become a franchise owner. He figures that's easier than college and is certain to "graduate" because it's a place where he can't have so much sex. I am totally not kidding. That is the plot.

You'd think there would be a ton of nudity in this movie, but there really isn't. Yes, it has it but it's not constantly in-your-face.

In the way this movie works, you get a few barely-there minutes of story, a gag that goes on way too long, a little more story, another gag that goes on too long, rinse and repeat until the end.

Most of the gags aren't funny, and for some you have to suspend your disbelief a lot. An example is one scene where a bunch of fat people fart in the bathroom and blow a hole in the side of the building as a result.

There was one thing about the story that really ticked me off. The guy doesn't get the girl at the end. Don't worry, I am spoiling nothing by telling you that. It's a completely missed opportunity by the writers. They could have had the guy, the protagonist, get the girl, signifying his days of fooling around were over and that he finally found his calling. Then they could have shown them getting married in a "Busterburger" themed wedding and afterward running their own franchise store, together and happy. It would have been easy for them to put that in there. They didn't do that. Instead you're just left wondering whatever happened to those two.

For the few positives I can say, there is a defined protagonist (main character) and antagonist (villain). Most characters in the context of the movie are fairly well defined.

The biggest positive, oddly enough, is the music.

Where the music is concerned, somebody cared. I recognized the style from the very opening theme Hamburgers for America. This is the first thing you hear when the movie begins. It's pro-level jingle style music you heard all over the place in the 1980s. For the time, it has got some seriously high production value to it. When I heard that song, I was thinking, "Wow.. that guy is really putting his all into a song about hamburgers." Catchy? Yes, very. It's WAY too good of a soundtrack for this movie.

But make no mistake, this movie sucks. Watch it for a guilty pleasure and nothing more.

Yes, this this movie is available to watch completely for free... if you can stand to watch it. Just search for it on YouTube.

Guys who own stupid expensive and stupid cheap guitars at the same time

I used to think these guys were weird, but I understand why they do this.

Take a Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster in Torino Red. Not cheap. But that doesn't stop guys from buying it, as it is one of the better Artist models from fender. I personally think the Eric Johnson model is the better guitar, but that's just my preference.

What's more interesting is what some guys do after they buy that really expensive guitar.

Before getting into that, yes I have owned some expensive ritzy guitars. I parted with all of them because none ever really worked out. At this point in my guitar playing life, I go with cheap vintage or cheap new. In addition to that, I've been around some seriously expensive stuff. I did attend a NAMM show and saw the best of the best new guitars, and have also seen the best of the best vintage as well.

The only thing I've not seen nor experienced at this point is a from-scratch built guitar. And by that I mean one guy, with his own shop, that builds every single part of the guitar. For the wood parts, that is. This is the guy who fabricates the body and neck from blanks and does it all himself. That's the only type of electric guitar I've yet to experience.

Now as for the guys who buy the ridiculously expensive guitars, it is interesting and sometimes almost funny that they will also own something ridiculously dirt cheap, like a Grote. Sure, the guy may have a $2,000 Stratocaster or a $4,000 Les Paul. But literally right next to it in his collection are one or more insanely cheap guitars, none of which are worth more than $200 at most.

Is this guitar player's remorse? No. That kind of remorse happens when you buy something really expensive and then realize it was a mistake. These guys kept their expensive guitars.

The urge to go dirt cheap is for a different reason entirely.

Okay, so the guy bought his dream guitar. It was really expensive, but he finally got it. The top of the mountain was reached.

After reaching that peak, there's only one way to go. Down.

The funny part is this: Now there's a new goal. How far down can one go?

This is when that guy who owns the really expensive guitar will buy something really cheap. Something he can just bang around, maybe switch out the electronics, maybe try some woodworking with it, and so on. He's certainly not going to modify his expensive guitar, but for something under $200? Sure.

Remember that dirt cheap guitar I said some people buy in threes? It would not surprise me at all if some of those buyers were people that already owned a guitar worth over $2,000.

It's fun to finally get that dream guitar. But it's also fun to mod cheap guitars. The goal in both instances is to keep having fun, and that's why some guys own both the expensive and dirt cheap stuff at the same time.

There's also a secondary goal, which is to have a guitar they can actually use instead of just sit there and look pretty. All expensive guitars are ultimately white elephants. Nice to own, very pretty, but useless as a gigging guitar because the stupid thing is just too valuable. The expensive guitar is totally a "pride of ownership" thing more than anything else, so having a cheap guitar for gigging or taking to a friend's place for a jam is less stressful, to say the least.